An application may allow a user to copy an identified portion of source content into a clipboard store. The user may then paste the identified portion into target content. In many cases, the user may want the identified portion to look the same in the target content as it does in the source content. However, this objective is not always attained. The identified portion has a prescribed style when it appears in the source content. The process of copying the identified portion into the clipboard store may not adequately capture the style information applied to the identified portion in the source content. As a result, the identified portion may not have the same visual appearance in the target content as it does in the source content.
Consider the illustrative example shown in FIG. 1. In this case, the user has copied a table 102 into a clipboard store. The table 102 appears in source content 104. For example, the table 102 may appear in an encompassing page of content created by a particular application. The user pastes the table 102 stored in the clipboard store into target content 106. The table 102 appears in the target content 106 as pasted table 108.
As shown, the table 102, as it appears in the source content 104, presents information using a prescribed style. For instance, the table 102 presents text in various fonts. Further, the table 102 uses a double-lined border to enclose its text. The act of copying the table 102 to the clipboard store may not capture this style information. As such, when pasted into the target content 106, the table 102 will not appear the same as it does in the source content 102. In the illustrative case of FIG. 1, the pasted table 108 does not have the same fonts used in the table 102. Further, the pasted table 108 has lost its double-lined border. The user can manually reintroduce the style information to the pasted table 108, but this may be a labor-intensive and tedious process.
Some content can be expressed using a presentation-related markup language, such as the commonly used HyperText Markup Language (HTML). HTML describes content using presentation-related tags, e.g., by using tags to identify paragraphs, headers, images, and so forth. HTML can also work in conjunction with style sheets provided by Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). When copying an identified portion of HTML, it may be particularly challenging to preserve style information that pertains to the identified portion.
For at least the above-described illustrative reasons, there is a need for a more effective way to copy information from source content while retaining the style information that is applied to the information within the source document.